I started thinking about moving to another country maybe five years ago. It wasn’t a plan. It was just a thought my friend and I kept coming back to, usually triggered by whatever was in the headlines that week. We’d talk about it for an hour and then forget about it until the next time something made us want to leave.
Then a couple of years ago I started actually looking. Not browsing. Looking. Where are the good places to retire? What makes a place good? What do I actually need? What matters to me at this point in my life?
The more I looked, the more Albania kept coming back up. At first it was the cost. Getting into the country as a retiree versus a digital nomad is more accessible than most places I was looking at. Then as I kept digging I noticed the healthcare was actually reasonable, and if something serious happens, Greece is not far. Better facilities, better equipped for serious cases. An hour by ferry from the southern coast.
Sometimes I wish I could just pick up and go. I suppose I could. But I have things keeping me here. My daughter, who is eleven, is my anchor. My mother is in her 80’s and her health is declining. These aren’t small things. They’re the whole reason the timeline looks the way it does.
So I took everything I was researching and started writing it down here, for someone who might be in a similar place. Not the dream version of this. The real one. The version where you have a body that’s been through things, a life that has people in it you can’t just leave behind, and a number in your head that has to work on paper before any of this becomes possible.
If that’s you, you’re in the right place. Start with Start Here and go from there.